A wireless communication system provides a two-way communication between a plurality of fixed or portable subscriber units and a fixed network infrastructure, such as base station or an access point. The fixed network infrastructure uses channel control information to establish links for the two-way communication. The channel control information is sent through the wireless communication system as part of a frame. The channel control information occupies a significant portion of the frame as it contains information necessary for establishing and maintaining communication in the wireless communication system. Therefore, the channel control information reduces the amount of space in a frame that can be used for transmitting user data.
In current systems, a base station receives channel quality information (CQI) from a subscriber station and accordingly categorizes the subscriber station into different groups. The base station encodes and transmits the channel control information based upon the group of the subscriber station. In general, two types of channel control information are transmitted from the base station to a subscriber station. First channel control information is transmitted to all the subscriber stations in a cell regardless of the group of a subscriber station. Second channel control information is separately transmitted to all subscriber stations by group. The base station assigns a coding scheme based on the group of the subscriber station. The grouping of the subscriber stations is updated based on the channel quality information after predetermined intervals. However, the channel quality information may change frequently within the predetermined time interval and hence may not be reflected on the grouping of the subscriber stations. Thus, the assigned coding scheme may not be appropriate for the channel conditions during the predetermined intervals. Moreover, the process of updating the grouping of the subscriber unit is a complicated process, and forces more additional messaging for grouping/tracking the subscriber units in the communication network. Hence, the efficiency of the channel and the reliability factor of the communication node are reduced.
Accordingly, there is a need for more effectiveness in transmitting the channel control information across a communication network.
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